Friday, December 11, 2009

Abreojos (open your eyes!)




It took me a few days to get all my papers reviewed and grades recorded, but finally I got to the bottom of the pile. The top picture shows me in my "office," the starboard settee. I used the computer so much we had to run the generator a couple of times to keep the batteries topped off.
Turtle Bay was a nice place to spend a few days, although we did lose something there - someone stole our fishing rod, which was clipped into a rod holder near the transom. A good lesson to be alert and not give anybody any irresistible opportunities. Luckily we do most of our fishing by trolling handlines.
Thursday we finally hauled up the anchor. The wind for heading south is great - 10-20 knots out of the NW. We haven't had very good results using our windvane with the genoa, so now that we have plenty of wind we've changed over to the 80% jib. That did the trick, the windvane steered like a champ all day.
We decided to anchor for the night at Asuncion, because we wanted to stop in Abreojos and at our current rate we would get there before morning. Asuncion was an easy anchorage to enter after dark, and we put the hook down right off the beach near town.
Today we got an early start, so that we would make Abreojos in daylight. The wind was great again, so we sailed most of the day, and the windvane worked well.

Today was the first time we had flown the spinnaker since we left Oregon. We had a nice light offshore breeze and the seas were calm, so conditions were perfect.

Another first today: we caught a fish! Not only that, we caught 3 fish! The first one was a small bonito, so I threw him back. Not 15 minutes later, we caught another bonito, and this one became lunch. Then several hours later we caught a tuna. Luckily it was a fairly small one; we're not sure what we would do with a big one. This one will be sushi and a couple of dinners.
Tonight we are anchored at Abreojos. Tomorrow we'll try to find a guide to take us into San Ignacio to see the gray whales. We've been to Scammon's Lagoon before, but that was nearly 30 years ago. This should be the time the whales start arriving for calving season, but we didn't see a single one today or yesterday.

2 comments:

Naomi said...

Hi Mark and Vicki...sounds like we'll just miss you in Mag Bay...we're heading out tomorrow (Sat), when I think you'll be arriving. Too bad! Congrats on your fishing success, and sounds like you've had great sails! Sorry to hear about your lost rod. We'll have to be more careful too...we've actually been amazed at how friendly and honest everyone has been so far. We look forward to catching up with you down the coast!

Jules said...

how exciting! i hope the sushi was good!